Just driving yesterday's point home some more: "The Lilith was one of the first computer workstations worldwide with a high-resolution graphical display and a mouse. The first prototype was developed by Niklaus Wirth and his group between 1978 and 1980 with Richard Ohran as the hardware specialist. [...] The whole system software of the Lilith was written in Modula-2, a structured programming language which Wirth has developed at the same time. The programs were compiled into low-level M-Code instructions which could be executed by the hardware. The user interface was designed with windows, icons and pop-up menus. Compared with the character based systems available at that time, these were revolutionary metaphors in the interaction with a computer." Jos Dreesen, owner of one of the few remaining working Liliths, wrote a Lilith emulator for Linux.

Apple produce industry changing products. This he approves of. Then they adopt aggressive litigation strategies to protect their early advantage. This he disapproves of.

You make it sound like a pattern. Apple has a forty year history - during how much of those forty decades have Apple been engaged in major IP legal actions? Is the average level of Apple's IP legal actions over those forty years higher than the average level of IP actions by other large similar tech companies?

It's worth bearing in mind that Apple were taken to cleaners on IP by Microsoft back in the 1990s when MS out maneuvered the bozos who were running Apple at the time. That's just business. Apple learnt from the 1990s. That's just good business.

These recent articles showing alternative GUIs are his way of illustrating that, although Apple tend to get in there early, their innovations are things that would have and have occurred to others independently.

So what? The same thing could be claimed about every invention or innovation ever made. Should there be patents or copyright on nothing? Should anything that builds on what went before (i.e. all of human science, technology and culture) be rendered open to free for all copying?

Therefore it is not proper for Apple to be granted monopolies on these innovations by the courts.

Why? Let's take a couple of real world examples. Xerox held some very valuable photocopying patents for a long while. The science and technology used in the photocopying techniques involved had deep roots in the history of science and technology. Are those patents invalid because of that? Similarly Dyson holds patents of technology in his bagless vacuum cleaners, the techniques involved had deep roots in the history of science and technology. Are those patents invalid because of that?

Apple is not seeking a monopoly on anything. It just wants to stop companies like Samsung blatantly copying it's products. Does anybody actually think that Samsung did not copy Apple's products? Does anybody not think that their copying was a deliberate and planned strategy?

Everybody apes success but once the aping becomes systematic copying then it should be stopped. The copying was so systematic and so crass at Samsung that when they copied Apple's retails stores they actually plastered them with Apple specific icons like the Safari one. Allowing that sort and scale of copying to continue would be just plain bonkers. Imagine a car maker starts making cars that look just like BMW cars, their ads ape BMW cars, their cars contain component designs whose patents are held by BMW, their showrooms have BMW logos scattered around. Would anybody be surprised let alone shocked if BMW took them to court?